I find Wikipedia very helpful for quick contact information.If someone mentions “the world’s smallest country, Sealand, is for sale,” and I want an idea of what Sealand is, Wikipedia is a good place to get a rough idea of what is going on.As far as I’ve seen, the major usage of Wikipedia is this kind of quick and dirty info dump by people who just want to get a basic idea of something and are aware that some of the information may be false.The Wiki user base is (I think) pretty savvy as a whole are also pretty good at smelling fake info (if an entry begins “<insert celebrity name> is a famous child molester…”, you can’t trust it).The idea of citing it in law school is ludicrous (see the Wiki site disclaimer), and it should not be allowed as a primary reference in school research, but there is definite value in using it in school as a secondary source, not the least reason for which is that it teaches the valuable lesson that all information, even that from “legitimate” sources, is suspect, and you have to do some legwork to find out the real story.The entries often hare extensive primary source notations that anyone can follow-up on.And, although false information and vandalism occurs, the overall reliability (accuracy and completeness) is better than that of asking a friend, posing the question on a message board, doing an online search, or even turning to media informational outlets.Suspect articles get marked, and additional disclaimers appear at the top of articles needing sourcing or other improvement.The knowledge base is not perfect, but the thing is just too damn useful to dismiss out of hand.

That video Sam linked does not make for a great case. Maybe it was just the presentation itself but I kept hearing a lot of vague descriptions of things. They talk of neutrality but also a voting process. That doesn't sound neutral to me. He talks about how everyone has the ability to affect it but then also mentions that some people have more weight in forming the content. And there was the bit about Wiki books? So they want to make encyclopedia's as well?

I can appreciate the interest they have in giving people free access to information. I think they have a loooooooong way to go to make it work. But that's my (biased) opinion.

There are definitly a lot of flows with Wikipedia. I do use it for work though. There are a lot of entries that include further references and that is something I find incredibly useful so that I may go to a source.

The idea of citing it in law school is ludicrous (see the Wiki site disclaimer), and it should not be allowed as a primary reference in school research, but there is definite value in using it in school as a secondary source, not the least reason for which is that it teaches the valuable lesson that all information, even that from “legitimate” sources, is suspect, and you have to do some legwork to find out the real story.

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Hi Todd. There are a staggering amount of professional computer and hard-copy sources that law students can study, cite, and even question. But if I allowed my students to use something as dubious and fundamentally amateur as Wikipedia, even as deep background third or fourth level research, a host of inaccuracies would accrue in no short time that they would miss and I would have to fix. Their whole process of research would be thrown awry, and we don't need more "bad" lawyering out there! I'm not guessing -- I speak from experience.

About JB on Wikipedia, I recall an older version of his "bio" as it appeared there, something littered with quotes taken out of the original context and set into a new, artificial locus designed to be as provocative as possible. Misinformation, misdirection, and, really, pretty darned close to character-assassination.

I can't access Wikipedia directly from China since it is banned over here but I can go to answers.com to get a feed from it. I find Wikipedia is useful for quick information about historical figures and geographical places but I have not really paid much attention to modern people on it. I was curious about JB's article and to be honest, it did not seem that bad, except for the superfluous material about criticisms. Then I found the link to the original article.

Holy crap, what an attack. Almost every line had a little dig or veiled comment and it was filled with useless, irrelevant information. The authors did their best to find some perceived slight with every project and the entire tone was derogatory. Absolute rubbish.

Do other modern personalities get attacked like JB did in Wikipedia or was it a random event by frustrated fanboys?

As for class action law suits...are you saying wikipedia is 'legitimate' enough to warrant someone taking that action?

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Slowly and ponderously, the lawmakers in this country are realizing that the InterNet is a form of publishing, and that those who publish on the InterNet should be held to the same kind of standards as those who publish on paper. Wikipedia has published disinformation about many people, myself included. When asked to do something about it, their response is a shrug. In the real world, this kind of deliberate publishing of lies would be enough to get a publisher sued.

I went into a basketball player's profile and added a really long paragraph about how he likes to bake different kind of pancakes, and then wrote about it on my blog. It was obvious it was fake, and it got a lot of laughs and good fun was had by all. Oh well! lol

I went into a basketball player's profile and added a really long paragraph about how he likes to bake different kind of pancakes, and then wrote about it on my blog. It was obvious it was fake, and it got a lot of laughs and good fun was had by all. Oh well! lol

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In that case, you are no better than anyone who vandalized JB's (or any other) entry.

Yes he is, he absolutely is, he added an entry about someone baking
pancakes, the people who vandalized JB's page added entries that were
character assassination, I hope you can see the difference between baking
pancakes and character assassination.

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